The Importance Of Censorship On Music

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Recommended: On what grounds is censorship justified and what are its limits

“There is no truer truth obtainable by man, than comes of music." -Robert Browning Today in every country around the world there exists censorship laws regarding what is appropriate to be broadcast on television and radio for consumption by the general public. Things such as inappropriate or offensive language, references to drugs, criminal activities or even references to sex can be deemed inappropriate and not broadcast. The question arises, is this something done for the good of the public, or is this censoring a violation of our freedom to hear or see what we want to, and is it also a violation of the freedom of the artist to not play their music or to force them to change and compromise their art if they want it to be played on the radio. …show more content…

Since the invention of the radio and the mass production of music there have been reasons to ban or censor it, which have changed over time. Music Censorship refers to the regulation of audio recordings and performances by an approved commission, for example the FCC (Federal Communications Commission). Reasons for censoring music include foul language, violent content, hate speech towards a particular religious/ethnic group, drug or alcohol content, sexual content, for religious reasons, or for reasons particular to that time, for example certain songs such as ‘Atomic’ by Blondie and ‘Back in the U.S.S.R.’ but The Beatles were put on a temporary blacklist by the BBC during the Gulf War. Many ways to censor music exist, such as bleeping out individual words or phrases, or even taking them out all together, or even editing out whole bars of songs. In some cases the artists are asked to change the lyrics of their songs, such as in the case of the Rolling Stones ' "Let 's Spend the Night Together" was asked to be changed to "Let 's Spend Some Time Together” because the sexual innuendo was deemed inappropriate by Ed Sullivan when the rolling stones were asked to perform on the Ed Sullivan

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